“Ah, never, never more!” she chanted, lightly.
He paled slightly, then lifted a strand of her hair and drew it across his lips. It was the first caress he had given her in their six weeks of friendly intimacy, and her colour deepened. He shook the hair over her face. Her eyes peered out elfishly.
“I suspect we are going to flirt this week,” she said, drily.
“If you choose to call it that.” Her hair was clinging about his fingers.
“Suppose we make a compact—to regard nothing seriously that may occur this week.”
“Why are you so afraid of compromising yourself?”
“That belongs to the final explanation. But it is a recognised canon of strawberry-week ethics that everybody flirts furiously. Friendship is entirely too serious. Of course I shall flirt with you,—I shall let Dominga Earle see that at once,—as I am tired of all the others. Will you make the compact?”
“Yes.”
The sun had dropped below the ocean; only a bar of paling green lay on the horizon. Voices came faintly over the hill, and the shadows were rapidly gathering.
Thorpe’s face moved suddenly to hers. He flung her hair aside and kissed her. She did not respond, nor move. But when he kissed her again and again, she did not repulse him.